http://www.jor/com/strokes/NYseahorse-dive.jpg This picture was taken of the group that met George in NYC to verify the existence of large numbers of seahorses. This is a small pic - I'll see about getting a bigger one. standing: Isaac, Popeye, George, Cliff, Tom, Frank Chris, Glenn, Old Salt Kneeling: Kevin Angel, Glenda For those that weren't reading rec.scuba, this event was prompted after George Horn, a NYC dive shop owner, stated that there were hundreds of sea horses within the local waters during the summer months. MJBlack, a lake diving optometrist in Wisconsin called him a liar, stating he had seen but a couple dozen over his 20 years of diving. George, being the typical example of a New Yorker (loud and proud), told MJB to come to NY with all the money he was willing to lose, to be donated to breast cancer research. Of course, there was no response. But many other residents of rec.scuba wanted to come see the horses, not to mention prove MJB to be the @#%@# that he is. Just before it happened, Black threw out a modication of the bet: $200 for 200 seahorses. His charity: DAN. It looks like they made it out just in time. The seahorses were getting lethargic and are probably dying off. You can decide if the number seen vindicates George. MJB, of course, declared victory and George will uphold his end by sending a check to DAN. But if you believe that MJB is cheating breast cancer research, I encourage you to make a donation to http://bcrfcure.org (Breast Cancer Research Foundation), George's preferred charity. This outfit is associated with Estee Lauder and made $6M in research grants last year across the country. The web page asserts that 85% of donations go to research, so if we can accept that as true or nearly true, this isn't a charity that spends most of its money on fundraising. This is a deductable charitable contribution. You can made a donation by credit card on the web page using a secure server, or you can mail a check. I'd like to suggest that it be marked "In Honor of" "George Horn NY Seahorse Challenge." George's dive shop address is 3180-88 Fulton Street, Brooklyn NY 11208. Contribute whatever amount you feel is appropriate and affordable for you. And if you feel Black won, feel free to make a donation to DAN in his name. Below is Clifford's account of the event. Definitely worth reading. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: rec.scuba Subject: NY Seahorse dive From: Clifford Beshers Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 03:00:28 GMT Popeye, Kevin and I are sitting at my machine, (drinking good corn liquor, soon to be followed by a good single malt,) and we want to give you our collective summary. Individual hyperbole to follow. Newsgroup Attendees: George Horn. Larger than life. Popeye. Smaller, but still as large. Kevin. The same. (Aka Kevlar55 or ThreeMixDiver) Cliff. Taller than the rest of them. Old Salt. SCUBA wench. (Most guys put women on a pedestal. We'd like to put her on a capstan.) Frank T. An unexpected appearance by a faithful lurker. Other attendees: The Hub. Husband to OldSalt. Nice guy. Actually named ``Tom.'' Glenn Friend of OldSalt and The Hub Chris Friend of OldSalt and The Hub William DM with G. Horn, eel hunter, Brooklyn stunt driver. Bill Longtime friend/dive buddy of G Horn. Angel Jamaican guy with amazing tattoos and build. Frank (#2) One of George's regulars. Isaac Student of George's. Mario One of George' regulars. Fabrezio Insane Italian, hunts fish and drunks with speargun. Oleg Russian, one of George's regulars, the designated out of air diver. That's seventeen divers. Twelve cars. Apologies to the few we might have missed. George seems to know everyone in Brooklyn, has taught half of them to dive, and expects to teach the other half any day now. Popeye and Kevin showed up on Saturday at 9:30 AM, at least 9 hours before Cliff expected them. They could have made it by 5:30AM, but being gentlemen and Cliff not being a jarhead, they decided to sleep a bit first. Were it Scott, they would have kicked his door down at zero dark thirty, as they have done so often before with other members (past and present) of the armed forces who inhabit this newsgroup. So we hustled over to George's only to be told by the guy in the shop ``George? He hasn't worked here for years!'' Fortunately, this seems to be a standard joke around the shop. We kicked his ass and went in to see George. We met the man amid the organized chaos of forty plus years of diving. We all traded lies, wrecked a chinese buffet, compared waistlines, then waddled off to do some braille diving at dusk at Sixth Street Beach on Reynolds Channel, Far Rockaway, Queens, New Yawk. Cliff was trying the long hose for the first time and asked Popeye to be a proper buddy. Seconds later subaquatic contact was decimated by the negative visibility. Popeye said he couldn't see the inside of his mask. Cliff did his first solo dive. Only one DIR thing at a time. Nevertheless, the viz cleared up a bit (3') below 25-30ft, so we saw some eels, horseshoe crabs, blue crabs. George fed his pet blenny some mussels. William (George's DM and a regular dive buddy) shot an eel that he thought was a striper in the low viz, and the eel kicked his ass. After the dive, Fabrezio repelled an obnoxious drunk by putting a warning shot across his bow with a speargun in the parking lot. The drunk called the police, who came down and asked about a disturbance. Kevin immediately noticed that one cop was spitting tobacco into a jar and felt right at home. George came over, chatted with the cops, denied that any disturbance had taken place, and sent them away smiling. The cops also kindly overlooked the hose that George had hooked up to the fire hydrant for cleaning gear. A good time was had by all. On getting back to Cliff's place, Kevin and Popeye had acquired Brooklyn accents as well as one or two choice Brooklyn phrases. They used these repeatedly throughout the rest of the trip, as did the Brooklyn natives. Both made many comments, amazed, alarmed and enthusiastic about their first exposure to urban diving. This was echoed by Kevin's sister early the next morning (10:30AM) who lives in Manhattan (he woke her up), when he called to say ``Hi, I'm in Brooklyn SCUBA diving.'' She said, ``Who is this? There's no SCUBA diving in Brooklyn!'' The next morning, we jumped out of bed and headed back to George's shop (the place of orderly chaos), arriving by 8AM as we had promised. Since George didn't show up until 8:45, we went across the street for a spanish breakfast. Then the Fulton Street regulars assembled. We got ready to go. We waited. Then Old Salt and family showed up. Then George finished getting himself and all his regulars ready. Finally, we ran a convoy of twelve cars along three highways and a bridge, the Gil Hodges Marine Parkway Bridge over Jamaica Bay, at the end of which was the dive site. The normal access was closed off due to construction, but the gate was open and there was no ``No Trespassing'' sign, so we drove in and jumped into the water before the construction superintendant could notice from his perch up on the bridge. We arrived in time for slack tide, so we dove without noticeable current. The viz was unexpectedly great. Actually, it was about 10', but compared to the murk of the previous night, it was excellent. It was plenty good to look for Hippocampi. Almost everyone found some seahorses. George and Cliff each found seven, which was a typical count for most divers. Popeye and Kevin hit the jackpot by going deeper (35-40') and found over two dozen. Popeye tried to get them to stand in line, but the little guys wouldn't salute. Everyone also found that the little bastards are really good at hiding. Afterwards, we heard this story repeatedly: A diver who found a seahorse would turn to let his/her buddy know, and would then turn back only to find the little guy had disappeared. A long visual search would then reveal that the seahorse hadn't moved after all, but was just doing his little subaquatic chameleon imitation. The entire dive area was roughly a hundred yards along the beach, maybe forty yards out into the bay, and went from 0' down to about 40'. Most diver groups never saw each other. George never saw Cliff who never saw Kevin and Popeye who never saw Old Salt, etc. Both George and Cliff counted seven by travelling in a straight line, assuring that there were no duplicates for those counts. Then everyone got tired of counting and spent a whole bunch of time looking at the wealth of other types of marine life. Blue crabs, hermit crabs, black fish, flounder, soft coral, red coral, many beautiful little fish both local and tropical, none of which could eat us nor looked very tasty to us, and hence fell into Popeye's category of other. The flounder and blackfish fell into George's and the insane Italian Fabrezio's category of edible, and were promptly speared. Angel one of George's regulars and who had just returned from Bonair, summed up our enthusiasm well by announcing that this was his new regular dive site. Upon exiting the water, we were met by construction workers, who escalated the problem of our presence through several levels, until a ``cop'' from the Triborough Bridge authority (or some such department) was awakened by his sargeant from a sound slumber in a nearby parking lot. ``There are some SCUBA divers under the bridge.'' ``No there aren't. You can't dive down there.'' But he came over, saw we were there, listened to the story of George, Black, the newsgroup and seahorses and said, ``Well yeah, you gotta do the dive for braggin' rights at least. That guy sounds like a dick.'' We gave him a bagel and sent him away smiling. But a few minutes later he stopped Kevin and William as they drove out the gate, blocking traffic with his wrecker, lights on, to ask ``How many seahorses are in there?'' We told him we had found over sixty. He replied, `` How big are they?'' George expects to get him certified soon. Everyone had a great time, except the guy who didn't see any seahorses. All were amused and/or amazed by George's ability to generate recurring appearances of peace officers. And then to send them away smiling. Cliff, Popeye and Kevin ________________ Clifford Beshers beshers@cs.columbia.edu